As the Crow Flies (59 page)

“But
Princess Elizabeth has only just announced her engagement.”

“I
am aware of that, but we all know how Daphne does like to plan ahead.”

Daniel
adhered to his mother’s wishes and made no mention of the flats when he
discussed with Charlie the launching of the new company over dinner that night.
He also noticed that a picture entitled Apples and Pears by an artist called
Courbet had replaced the van Gogh that had hung in the hall. Something else he
didn’t comment on.

Daniel
spent the following day at the planning department of the LCC (Inquiries) at
County Hall. Although a clerk supplied him with all the relevant papers he was
quick to point out, to Daniel’s frustration, that he could not remove any
original documents from the building.

In
consequence he spent the morning repeatedly going over the papers, making
verbatim notes of the relevant clauses and then committing them to memory so it
wouldn’t prove necessary to carry anything around on paper. The last thing he
wanted was for his parents to stumble by accident across any notes he had made.
By five o’clock, when they locked the front door behind him, Daniel felt
confident he could recall every relevant detail.

He
left County Hall, sat on a low parapet overlooking the Thames and repeated the
salient facts to himself.

Trumper’s,
he had discovered, had applied to build a major department store that would encompass
the entire block known as Chelsea Terrace. There would be two towers of twelve
stories in height. Each tower would consist of eight hundred thousand square
feet of floor space. On top of that would be a further five floors of offices
and walkways that would span the two towers and join the twin structures
together. Outline planning permission for the entire scheme had been granted by
the LCC. However, an appeal had been lodged by a Mr. Martin Simpson of the Save
the Small Shops Federation against the five floors that would bring together
the two main structures over an empty site in the center of the Terrace. It
didn’t take a great deal of hypothesizing to decide who was making sure Mr.
Simpson was getting the necessary financial backing.

At
the same time Mrs. Trentham herself had been given outline planning permission
to build a block of flats to be used specifically for low-rent accommodation.
Daniel went over in his mind her detailed planning application which had showed
that the flats would be built of rough-hewn concrete, with the minimum of
internal or external facilities the expression “jerry-built” immediately sprang
to mind. It wasn’t hard for Daniel to work out that Mrs. Trentham’s purpose was
to build the ugliest edifice the council would allow her to get away with,
right in the middle of Charlie’s proposed palace.

Daniel
looked down to check his memory against the notes. He hadn’t forgotten
anything, so he tore the crib sheet into tiny pieces and dropped them into a
litter bin on the corner of Westminster Bridge, then returned home to the
Little Boltons.

Daniel’s
next move was to telephone David Oldcrest, the resident law tutor at Trinity
who specialized in town and country planning. His colleague spent over an hour
explaining to Daniel that, what with appeals and counter-appeals that could go
all the way up to the House of Lords, permission for such a building as Trumper
Towers might not be granted for several years. By the time a decision had been
made, Dr. Oldcrest reckoned that only the lawyers would have ended up making
any money.

Daniel
thanked his friend, and having considered the problem he now faced came to the
conclusion that the success or failure of Charlie’s ambitions rested entirely
in the hands of Mrs. Trentham. That was unless he could...

For
the next couple of weeks he spent a considerable amount of his time in a
telephone box on the corner of Chester Square, without ever once making a call.
For the remainder of each day, he followed an immaculately dressed lady of
obvious self-confidence and presence around the capital, trying not to be seen
but often attempting to steal a glimpse of what she looked like how she behaved
and the kind of world she lived in.

He
quickly discovered that only three things appeared to be sacrosanct to the
occupant of Number 19 Chester Square. First, there were the meetings with her
lawyers in Lincoln’s Inn Fields which seemed to take place every two or three
days, though not on a regular basis. Second came her bridge gatherings, which
were always at two o’clock, three days a week: on Monday at 9 Cadogan Place, on
Wednesday at 117 Sloane Avenue and on Friday at her own home in Chester Square.
The same group of elderly women appeared to arrive at all three establishments.
Third was the occasional visit to a seedy hotel in South Kensington where she
sat in the darkest corner of the tea room and held a conversation with a man
who looked to Daniel a most unlikely companion for the daughter of Sir Raymond
Hardcastle. Certainly she did not treat him as a friend, even an associate, and
Daniel was unable to work out what they could possibly have in common.

After
a further week he decided that his plan could only be executed on the last
Friday before he resumed to Cambridge. Accordingly he spent a morning with a
tailor who specialized in army uniforms. During the afternoon he set about
writing a script, which later that evening he rehearsed. He then made several
telephone calls, including one to Spinks, the medal specialists who felt confident
they could have his order made up in time. On the last two mornings but only
after he was sure his parents were safely out of the house he carried out a
full dress rehearsal in the privacy of his bedroom.

Daniel
needed to be certain that not only would Mrs. Trentham be taken by surprise but
also she would remain off balance for at least the twenty minutes he felt would
prove necessary to see the whole exercise through.

That
Friday over breakfast, Daniel confirmed that neither of his parents was expected
to return home until after six that evening. He readily agreed that they should
all have dinner together as he was returning to Cambridge the following day. He
hung around patiently waiting for his father to leave for Chelsea Terrace, but
then had to wait another half hour before he could depart himself because his
mother was held up by a phone call just as she was on her way out. Daniel left
the bedroom door open and marched around in endless circles.

At
last his mother’s conversation came to an end and she left for work. Twenty
minutes later Daniel strolled out of the house carrying a small suitcase
containing the uniform he had obtained from Johns and Pegg the previous day.
Cautiously he walked three blocks in the wrong direction before hailing a taxi.

On
arrival at the Royal Fusiliers Museum Daniel spent a few minutes checking the
picture of his father that hung on the wall. The hair was wavier than his own,
and looked from the sepia photo to be a touch fairer. He suddenly feared he
might not be able to remember the exact details. Daniel waited until the
curator’s back was turned, then, despite feeling a tinge of guilt, quickly
removed the little photograph and placed it in his briefcase.

He
took another taxi to a barber in Kensington who was only too delighted to
bleach the gentleman’s hair, switch his parting and even to add a wave or two,
creating as near as possible a duplicate of the sepia photograph from which he
had been asked to work. Every few minutes Daniel checked the changing process
in the mirror, and once he believed the effect was as close as could be
achieved he paid the bill and left. The next cabbie he directed to Spinks, the
medal specialists in King Street, St. James. On arrival he purchased for cash
the four ribbons that he had ordered over the phone; to his relief the young
assistant did not inquire if he was entitled to wear them. Another taxi took
him from St. James to the Dorchester Hotel. There he booked himself into a
single room and informed the girl on the desk that he intended to check out of
the hotel by six that night. She handed him a key marked 309. Daniel politely
refused the porter’s offer to carry his case and merely asked for directions to
the lift.

Once
safely in his room he locked the door and laid the contents of his suitcase
carefully on the bed. The moment he had finished changing from his suit into
the uniform he fixed the row of ribbons above the left-hand breast pocket
exactly as they were in the photograph and finally checked the effect in the long
mirror attached to the bathroom door. He was every inch a First World War
captain of the Royal Fusiliers, and the purple and silver ribbon of the MC and
the three campaign medals simply added the finishing touch.

Having
checked over every last detail against the stolen photograph Daniel began to
feel unsure of himself for the first time. But if he didn’t go through with it...
He sat on the end of the bed, checking his watch every few minutes. An hour
passed before he stood up, took a deep breath and pulled on his long trenchcoat
almost the only article of clothing he had the right to wear locked the door
behind him and went down to the lobby. Once he had pushed his way through the
swing doors, he hailed another taxi which took him to Chester Square. He paid
off the cabbie and checked his watch. Three forty-seven. He estimated that he
still had at least another twenty minutes before the bridge party would begin
to break up.

From
his now familiar telephone box on the corner of the square Daniel watched as
the ladies began to depart from Number 19. Once he had counted eleven of them
leave the house he felt confident that Mrs. Trentham must, servants apart, now
be on her own, he already knew from the parliamentary timetable detailed in the
Daily Telegraph that morning that Mrs. Trentham’s husband would not be expected
back in Chester Square until after six that night. He waited for another five
minutes before he came out of the telephone box and marched quickly across the
road. He knew that if he hesitated, even for a moment, he would surely lose his
nerve. He rapped firmly on the knocker and waited for what felt like hours
before the butler finally answered.

“Can
I help you, sir?”

“Good
afternoon, Gibson. I have an appointment with Mrs. Trentham at four-fifteen.”

“Yes,
of course, sir,” said Gibson. As Daniel had anticipated, the butler would
assume that someone who knew his name must indeed have an appointment. “Please
come this way, sir,” he said before taking Daniel’s trenchcoat. When they reached
the door of the drawing room Gibson inquired, “May I say who is calling?”

“Captain
Daniel Trentham.”

The
butler seemed momentarily taken aback but opened the door of the drawing room
and announced, “Captain Daniel Trentham, madam.”

Mrs.
Trentham was standing by the window when Daniel entered the room. She swung
round, stared at the young man, took a couple of paces forward, hesitated and
then fell heavily onto the sofa.

For
God’s sake don’t faint was Daniel’s first reaction as he stood in the center of
the carpet facing his grandmother.

“Who
are you?” she whispered at last.

Don’t
let’s play games, Grandmother. You know very well who I am,” said Daniel,
hoping he sounded confident.

“She
sent you, didn’t she?”

“If
you are referring to my mother, no, she did not. In fact she doesn’t even know
that I’m here.”

Mrs.
Trentham’s mouth opened in protest, but she did not speak. Daniel swayed from
foot to foot during what seemed to him to be an unbearably long silence. His
eye began to focus on an MC that stood on the mantelpiece.

“So
what do you want?” she asked.

“I’ve
come to make a deal with you, Grandmother.”

“What
do you mean, a deal? You’re in no position lo make any deals.”

“Oh,
I think I am, Grandmother. You see, I’ve just come back from a trip to
Australia.” He paused. “Which turnd out to be very revealing.”

Mrs.
Trentham flinched, but her eyes did not leave him for a moment.

“And
what I reamed about my father while I was there doesn’t bear repeating. I won’t
go into any details, as I suspect you know every bit as much as I do.”

Her
eyes remained fixed on him and she slowly began to show signs of recovery.

“Unless,
of course, you want to know where they had planned to bury my father
originally, because it certainly wasn’t in the family plot at Ashurst parish
church.”

“What
do you want?” she repeated.

“As
I said, Grandmother, I’ve come to make a deal.”

“I’m
listening.”

“I
want you to abandon your plans for building those dreadful flats in Chelsea
Terrace, and at the same time withdraw any objections you may have to the
detailed planning permission Trumper’s has applied for.”

“Never.”

“Then
I fear the time may have come for the world to be informed of the real reason
for your vendetta against my mother.”

“But
that would harm your mother every bit as much as me.”

“Oh,
I don’t think so, Grandmother,” said Daniel. “Especially when the press find
out that your son resigned his commission with far from glowing testimonials,
and later died in Melbourne in even less auspicious circumstances despite the
fact he was finally laid to rest in a sleepy village in Berkshire after you had
shipped the body home, telling your friends that he had been a successful
carafe broker and died tragically of tuberculosis.”